Ready to Cut The Cord

[willwallace]

After many years of paying for cable, and then satellite TV, I'm finally at the point where I am going to just cancel my current Directv.
At the moment I find that most of my tv watching is through Netflix, using a Roku 3. There's always tons of movies to choose from, and I can always seem to find a good series that was on TV recently to watch. Two examples of that would be Dexter, which I finished recently, and Breaking Bad, where I'm up to season 4.
Where I live now unfortunately has no over the air broadcasts available, since I'm in the sticks, basically. Also my house is at the bottom of a hill, which doesn't help reception. Tried a small indoor HD antenna, but I can't get anything at all. I guess I could go for a bigger outdoor unit, but I really don't feel like doing that.
So now I've been investigating stations like CBS, Fox, NBC, ABC, etc online. For most shows, you can watch full episodes online after a week or two has passed from the original air date. This also goes for lots of cable channels, but not all. AMC for example lets you eventually watch episodes online, so The Walking Dead is available. Syfy, on the other hand, requires you already have some tv provider, which is disappointing.
With the Roku 3, you can stream from a tablet to the tv, so using the websites it's simple to watch shows on TV. They may be a few weeks behind everyone else, but that doesn't bother me. I almost never watch any shows live, anyway.
The one thing that may annoy me is not being able to watch football games live, but that could be taken care of by going to a local sports bar.

So, has anyone who has already cut the cord have any tips to share?

 

[J Riff]

Many years ago.... when VHS was invented, the cord got snipped. NO channels! Zero. Well, actually, now, the couch-potato rommie-unit pulls in four stations of propoganda, and it's ON, outside my door, each and every day, no matter what is on, he watches it and goes Huhhr-Huhhrr! sounding very much like Homer Simpson - when nothing noticeably funny has occurred. That's what modren TV does to people I reckon.
Of course one needs soap-operas, like horkey and baseball, to kill off the hours, and that's a few hrs. a week. However, there is no escaping the TV here, it's on everywhere, usually the death/abuse 'news' loop, and so that seems to keep the population occupied while dimming their intelligence steadily down, down, down into depths of moronicity previously only dreamed of.

 

[Victoria Silverwolf]

Well said.

Some time ago we dropped our cable because we were only watching a handful of movies from Turner Classic Movies. Now we only use it for DVD's. On quiet nights at work I can use various sources to watch public domain movies and TV series on the computer.

 

[Ray McCarthy]

I have just Free to Air Radio and TV. The Irish Terrestrial TV, plus legal free Satellite TV, with a bigger dish we get reliable Continental Channels. The Irish Pay TV satellite is from same location as UK Free to Air TV (about 20 decent channels out of 200) .
We realized that the pay channels had loads of repeats, sometimes off the free channels. It wasn't worth it. We buy DVD of any good Films / Series that's not on FTA TV. We spend less than that than a Netflix sub. It's just a video Rental shop via Broadband. We stopped renting once supermarkets and Amazon and other retailers were selling at reasonable prices, as we'd only buy stuff we'd expect to watch more than once.

PayTV always makes a big issue of having so many channels, but most are watched 0.1% of time and 92% of viewing time in Ireland & UK of Pay TV subscribers is actually of channels that are free! Yet these channels are listed in the Pay TV advertising.

Unless you want to watch all the new releases and big name series, Netflix is poor value as you pay all year no matter how little you watch. It's worse than a rental shop actually as you only paid there when you wanted a VHS or DVD.

I prefer to spend more time at other things, hence only buy Video I really want to watch.

Our Satellite Distribution system (four satellites can be received) feeds up to 12 outlets. I have two cards in a PC for recording (TV or Radio off sat), two generic sat boxes, a cheap generic HD sat box and a UK Freesat HD box. All "Free to Air" only. This all is a ONCE OFF cost less than a year of Pay TV.

One Sat box has the little FM TX sold to connect MP3 players/phones to Car radio, so I can listen on an FM radio anywhere in the house.

Many satellite systems still work for free TV after you cancel. Actually in UK & Ireland you actually own the Sky TV pay TV sat box from day 1, even if it was "free" install so they can't remove it or dish when you cancel. I think this is true with Sky Italia and Sky Deutchland too, but I'm not sure.

 

[J Riff]

The number of bad old movies on YoTub is increasing, a very encouraging trend. Today, for example, I can watch 'Son of Dracula' and pause it, rewind it, play it at the wrond speed, clip out sections of video or audio, or watch it ten times in a row. That's power. I can freeze frame and print up a poster-sized image of any frame of, for ex: 'They Saved Hitler's Brain.' Such things were undreamt of back in the primitive times of the previous century.
But - actually watch TV shows? I tried the Big Blang, Modren Family and a few others and just ended up wanting to hurt the people who wrote and acted in it. That's what one gets for reading good books while groan up I guess.

 

[Highlander II]

I never set up cable when I moved - for financial reasons. I just have internet and Netflix and do just fine.